Death Jr.
The PSP's very first announced title was a long time in coming... perhaps a bit too long.
Published: August 29, 2005
Few games have been watched as closely and hyped as much as Death Jr. was. From the very first screen, the game helped set the imaginary bar for what PSP games would end up looking like, and for a while, it was a good indicator of what a true polygonal platformer would look like on a handheld.
Then the PSP launch came, and some of the titles -- particularly Sony's first-party efforts -- showed how far between amazing and dull the PSP library could swing. It seems after all the time spent in development, Death Jr. leans towards the latter, and it's a crying shame (seriously, I'm weeping a bit as I type this), because the game has a decent start but dies a slow death at the hands of repetition and botched attempts at platforming and shooter elements.
I'm starting to sound like a broken record here with the past couple reviews, but there are few things as bad as seeing a game with a ton of potential wasting it on a few poorly executed choices. Death Jr. starts off promisingly enough, with the game's namesake and friends heading to the museum in the land of the dead.
The whole feel of the game has a Tim Burton-ish slant to it -- particulars Death Jr.'s friends Stigmartha (guilty of bleeding hands when she gets nervous), Dead Guppy (one guess as to what his problem is), Smith & Weston (two head-conjoined mad scientists), Seep (a Tourette's-addled limbless foreign exchange student in a vat), and of course Pandora, the lock-picking love of DJ's life.
When the group gets separated from the rest of the museum tour, they stumble across a box that even Pandora's obsessive-compulsive hiney can't get opened. DJ, of course, wanting to win her affections, happily obliges, thus releasing the demon Moloch and tens of thousands of underlings you'll be killing for the next dozen or so stages. The whole sequence is presented via a great pre-rendered cutscene, and then segues into the actual engine.
And that's when things start to fall apart.
DJ's world is brimming with off-kilter angles and rife with opportunities to use his trusty scythe as both a melee weapon and to interact with said world, but the PSP's analog stick doesn't allow for the most perfect of angles, leading to a lot of orienting things with the first-person camera before making risky leaps. Since half of the game is indeed platforming and using the scythe properly is rather cruicial. It probably would have felt a little easier doing things with the d-pad, but that's reserved for switching weapons.
Weapons, you see, are the other part of DJ's arsenal, and as you progress through the game, they become increasingly important in combat. Developer Backbone entertainment built a lock-on system into the game, but it's largely a line-of-sight affair for moderately distanced enemies, so you'll have to be looking at or near an enemy to lock onto them. This presents a few problems when trying to bring the camera under control since there's no easy way to swing it back around to where you need to be looking. You can center it behind DJ with the tap of the L shoulder, but it's still a bit of trial-and-error.
The mix of wonky shooting and oft-misaligned jumping bits is made worse by the fact that the game handles the use of the scythe quite realistically. Whether using it to pogo up to a ledge or slowing an ascent, the way the blade interacts with enemies and objects in the world is dead-on. This isn't normally a problem, but when DJ is facing just a bit off, grabbing multiple hooks or connecting at just the right time can feel iffy.
Again, this leads to a lot or pre-emptive straightening out until you have the controls down pat, and it can detract from trying to get into the rest of the game. Once you do get the basics down, the mix and jumping back and forth is entertaining, but the game still feels somehow... off. It's not something I can quite put my finger on, but something about the movement and the combat and the controls in general just don't quite connect me to the game.
Then the PSP launch came, and some of the titles -- particularly Sony's first-party efforts -- showed how far between amazing and dull the PSP library could swing. It seems after all the time spent in development, Death Jr. leans towards the latter, and it's a crying shame (seriously, I'm weeping a bit as I type this), because the game has a decent start but dies a slow death at the hands of repetition and botched attempts at platforming and shooter elements.
I'm starting to sound like a broken record here with the past couple reviews, but there are few things as bad as seeing a game with a ton of potential wasting it on a few poorly executed choices. Death Jr. starts off promisingly enough, with the game's namesake and friends heading to the museum in the land of the dead.
The whole feel of the game has a Tim Burton-ish slant to it -- particulars Death Jr.'s friends Stigmartha (guilty of bleeding hands when she gets nervous), Dead Guppy (one guess as to what his problem is), Smith & Weston (two head-conjoined mad scientists), Seep (a Tourette's-addled limbless foreign exchange student in a vat), and of course Pandora, the lock-picking love of DJ's life.
When the group gets separated from the rest of the museum tour, they stumble across a box that even Pandora's obsessive-compulsive hiney can't get opened. DJ, of course, wanting to win her affections, happily obliges, thus releasing the demon Moloch and tens of thousands of underlings you'll be killing for the next dozen or so stages. The whole sequence is presented via a great pre-rendered cutscene, and then segues into the actual engine.
And that's when things start to fall apart.
DJ's world is brimming with off-kilter angles and rife with opportunities to use his trusty scythe as both a melee weapon and to interact with said world, but the PSP's analog stick doesn't allow for the most perfect of angles, leading to a lot of orienting things with the first-person camera before making risky leaps. Since half of the game is indeed platforming and using the scythe properly is rather cruicial. It probably would have felt a little easier doing things with the d-pad, but that's reserved for switching weapons.
Weapons, you see, are the other part of DJ's arsenal, and as you progress through the game, they become increasingly important in combat. Developer Backbone entertainment built a lock-on system into the game, but it's largely a line-of-sight affair for moderately distanced enemies, so you'll have to be looking at or near an enemy to lock onto them. This presents a few problems when trying to bring the camera under control since there's no easy way to swing it back around to where you need to be looking. You can center it behind DJ with the tap of the L shoulder, but it's still a bit of trial-and-error.
The mix of wonky shooting and oft-misaligned jumping bits is made worse by the fact that the game handles the use of the scythe quite realistically. Whether using it to pogo up to a ledge or slowing an ascent, the way the blade interacts with enemies and objects in the world is dead-on. This isn't normally a problem, but when DJ is facing just a bit off, grabbing multiple hooks or connecting at just the right time can feel iffy.
Again, this leads to a lot or pre-emptive straightening out until you have the controls down pat, and it can detract from trying to get into the rest of the game. Once you do get the basics down, the mix and jumping back and forth is entertaining, but the game still feels somehow... off. It's not something I can quite put my finger on, but something about the movement and the combat and the controls in general just don't quite connect me to the game.